Milky

A mystery star located at the heart of the Milky Way could very well be from another galaxy, new research shows. The star is known as an S-star, and it is part of a swarm of stars found near Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole.These S-stars are located within a region of space around the supermassive black hole that is thought to be too extreme and messy to allow for any new star formation. As such, stars found within this region of space are often believed to have come from somewhere else. In…

The mysterious guts of a dense, dark cloud in the heart of the Milky Way are finally being revealed.Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by Adam Ginsburg of the University of Florida has managed to peer inside a cloud named G0.253+0.016 – more colloquially known as The Brick because it is so dark and dense and opaque.And what the researchers found there presents a bit of a pickle – because it's at odds with what we understand about how these clouds work.This, in turn, means we may need to…

At the center of the Milky Way orbits a swarm of stars attendant on a supermassive black hole.These are the S-stars, and they're the object of astronomical fascination and wonder. Not least of the puzzles surrounding them is their origin.The vicinity of a supermassive black hole is thought to be way too extreme and messy to allow for star formation, so astronomers believe that any stars hanging about there must have come from somewhere else.Well, now a team led by astrophysicist Shogo Nishiyama of Miyagi University of…

Researchers have discovered an extragalactic star, S0-6, near the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. The star’s unique composition and 10 billion-year journey from a small, now-absorbed galaxy challenge our understanding of the galactic center’s star population and formation. Credit: SciTechDaily.com A new study reveals that the star S0-6, located near the Milky Way’s central black hole, originated from an external galaxy, reshaping our understanding of star migration and formation in our galaxy. A star near…

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. The Milky Way, for example, is a spiral galaxy because of the way that stars, dust, and gas spiral out from the center of the galaxy.But spiral galaxies like ours are surprisingly rare in our galactic neighborhood, and for years, astronomers have wondered why since the 1960s.Now, they may finally have an answer, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy earlier this month.A turbulent pastUsing a supercomputer, researchers turned back the clock…

A groundbreaking discovery has been made by astronomers who identified a swirling disk of material, akin to those surrounding infant stars in the Milky Way Galaxy feeding a young star situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy located 160,000 light-years away. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the largest Earth-based astronomical project comprising 66 antennas in Northern Chile, the research team led by Durham University scientist Anna McLeod observed the system designated…

Astronomers have discovered a rotating disk around a forming high-mass star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, marking the most distant such observation. This discovery, made using the ALMA observatory and detailed in Nature, reveals key differences in the star formation process in different galaxies, highlighting the lower dust and metal content in the Large Magellanic Cloud compared to our Milky Way. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada A groundbreaking discovery by astronomers reveals a rotating disk around a high-mass star in the…

Over the years, we have seen scientists unveiling or discovering a huge number of space mysteries courtesy of the amazing technologies deployed by various nations. Now, researchers in Utah, have identified mysterious highly charged cosmic ray in a rare event. Scientists from Telescope Array, Utah say that the ray is coming from beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. The cosmic ray has been dubbed as “Amaterasu particle.” Know more about the mysterious cosmic ray here and what scientists are saying about this rare discovery.About…

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a detailed image of the Sagittarius C region near the Milky Way’s core, revealing a dense star-forming area with numerous protostars and infrared-dark clouds. This observation offers new perspectives on star formation and the dynamics of our galaxy’s center. (Artist’s concept, see Webb image below.)The play of darkness and light in our galaxy’s crowded core is put on display like never before.A bright field of gas sweeps around the edge of a dark, dense cloud where young…

The center of our galaxy is a menagerie of exotic objects; a supermassive black hole, clouds of hot gas, and giant stars that can help inform the origin story of much of the universe. Using the Webb telescope, scientists got to see this chaotic region of the Milky Way in a different light, revealing new features and incredible detail in a glimmering portrait of the galactic center. Webb Telescope Images the Pillars of CreationThe latest image from the Webb Space Telescope captured a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core,…